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A Strange Request

It was late in the afternoon when I received an urgent phone call a friend of mine was admitted to the ICU and his family who was at least 6 hours out asked if my mother and I would please go to the hospital for them. I’ve known this person since we were kids, I just ran into him at the food store just a few weeks earlier. We laughed about some of the silly things we did growing up and promised that we would catch up sometime soon so I was shocked when I heard that someone as young as him was fighting for his life. On my way to the hospital I found myself asking the Lord what would you have me to do and I got my answer: pray for his salvation.

I got to his room thinking that he would be awake so I could share with him the goodness of our God but to my surprise his nurse said that he was in a coma and that he probably won’t make it. So I sat at his bedside and talked to him about our childhood, the joys of parenting and playfully told him to wake up and get out of the bed or else. There he laid lifeless, hooked up to life support, breath being forced into his body. I wanted to pray for his healing but then the nurse came in and said that he had a couple of visitors, his coworkers who wanted to see him, so I only had a few minutes. So I leaned over and whispered in his ear and said, “You may not know God but He knows you and He loves you so much that He sent His beloved Son Jesus to die for you so that you may be free in Him. When you see Him be like the thief at the cross and just say, ‘Lord, remember me!’ and He will.” Then I left.

The next morning I got a phone call… he died earlier that morning. I was devastated. I asked God, why didn’t You ask me to pray for his healing, at least then he would be alive to share his testimony with others and now it’s too late. His response was, “Salvation is Healing.” Later that day I got a phone call from my Mom she just left the hospital to see his family who had arrived just before he passed. While she was there the hospital’s Chaplin showed up to pray for his departed soul and his family vehemently declined saying that they don’t believe in God and neither did he so they turned the Chaplin away and that is when the purpose of my visit was revealed. Had I been there while they were there they would have stopped me from praying for him so God sent me ahead of them to speak God’s salvation into his hearing. Then the Holy Spirit brought to my remembrance all of the many times God spoke to the dead and brought life to their mortal bodies. In the book of Mathew Jesus returns life to a dead girl simply by taking her hands in His. (Matthew 9:18-26) In the town of Nain Jesus raised a widow’s son Luke 7:11-16 with a simple command to get up and the young man did. We all know the story of Lazarus after being dead in the tomb for 4 days . Jesus, the word of God made flesh, told the people, “that if you believe you will see the glory of God.”-John11:40, This Jesus said in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” and he did. I heard the Lord ask me, “Is it that hard for you to believe that I, creator of your spirit and your mortal body, can save a person who is brain-dead. ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’–Matt 19:26

Jesus commended the centurion man in Matthew 8 with being a man of great faith because he understood that all it took was a word from the Throne of Grace and his servant will be healed. I believe that my Lord and Savior sent me ahead to speak God’s healing salvation into my childhood friend’s hearing and I believe that my Lord met with my friend in that space between life and death and there my friend received Salvation and True Healing Himself…Jesus Christ.